The dragon listened patiently as Loren sobbed and told her tales. He sat down as she spoke, and nestled her in the crook of his bent foreleg. He listened, always watching her with bright, golden eyes. When Loren’s tales turned to sobbing splutters, the raised a claw and gently wiped the young woman’s tears with its curved back.
Loren sighed, exhausted, and moved closer to the dragon’s great chest and the low rumble of his breath. He never said anything in response to what happened, but his warmth and that gentle rumble calmed Loren. She fell asleep, in the arms of the dragon of Aldoran.
Chapter Three
The next few days blew by in a blur of tears and grief.
The royal family of Aldoran went to Rhodia — the Beastman town — to pay their respects to the king. Gaturr’s body was never shown to the public; the state of his remains after the assassination would have caused a panic. Gaturr’s Spymaster, an old rabbit bent over with age, thought it best to burn the body quickly, before anyone else could get a look at it. Gaturr’s Warmaster, a proud and broad-chested bull named Doreos, vowed to the King and Queen of Aldoran that the Beastmen would waste no time looking for Kaiten. Doreos pounded his chest with a heavy fist and bowed. The heir must be found, he said, and he would be brought back to claim the throne. Loren couldn’t help but notice the way Doreos’s horns had been filed to sharp points, and how he smirked when her parents weren’t looking.
Loren had an uneasy feeling in the pit of her stomach the entire way back to Aldoran after the service for Gaturr had ended. Warmaster Sairus and all the Beastmen in Castle Aldoran had returned to Rhodia for the service and to mourn. Even though Sairus and the Beastmen servants and guards were sworn to the King and Queen of Aldoran, Gaturr held a place in their hearts. If it wasn’t for him and his work, the rest of the world would have stayed cold and hostile towards Beastmen.
“Mother,” Loren started, once they had returned to the castle. She followed her mother back to the queen’s study. “I don’t trust that bull, Doreos. He took charge of the capital as soon as Gaturr died.”
“I know, I noticed it too.” Katarina answered. The queen sighed, and took out pages of parchment and bottles of ink. “But the chain of command among the Beastmen are different, I suppose. And someone has to rule the Beastmen kingdom while they search for the rightful heir. Hopefully Doreos will keep his word.”
“I doubt he will.”
“What choice do we have, at the moment? Isran has already sent squads of our troops out as far as Markin’s Pass to search for any sign of Kaiten.”
“Isran did? What about the Warmaster?”
“Spymaster Isran volunteered to take on the Warmaster’s duties as well as his own, to give his friend the time he needs to grieve. I think it’s an honorable gesture, and allowed him to do it.”
Loren nodded, agreeing with the queen’s words. But something about what she said made the princess pause. Loren crossed the study, setting aside piles of books that the queen had taken off the shelves for her studies and left on the floor, and approached a floor to ceiling map of the world. The ink was faded in some parts, and was smudged from the constant tracing of paths with fingers. Loren squinted up at it, placing at finger at a spot to the west.
Aldoran lay there, with its castle on a cliff and the bustling port town Markholme by the sea. Rhodia lay to the north east, just past the Garruchian plains. The plains were named after the one-eyed tiger Beastman who found alongside a human king against a necromancer’s horde of the undead. The legend said Garruch the Mighty shattered the bones of a hundred dead men with one swing of his great battleaxe, and the battlefield had been renamed in his honor after the battle had been won. Loren didn’t quite believe that Garruch had killed all one hundred of the mentioned dead with one swing; he probably did face a hundred foes but took several hacks to get the job done. All the same, all Beastmen treasured that legend, and Kaiten’s eyes always shone with awe and adoration when Garruch the Mighty was brought up in conversation.
Loren traced a path from the clearly marked paved highway that led into a smudge of dark green that she knew represented Kilrough forest. The dense forest lay to the south east of Markholme’s gates, and the small path of packed earth was known as Markin’s Pass. It led down farther to the coast and ended at Green Reach, a small port town. The large trade vessels had no space to dock there, so ship captains preferred to dock at Markholme and pay the tax instead of risking smashing against the rocks. The tiny town usually accepted smaller vessels and foreigners coming from Kespia, the desert island across the sea to the south.
To the far north were craggy, almost impassible mountains, and at the highest peak was the Eye of the World. Isran sometimes received reports from the desolate castle and its Keeper, but never shared any further
